Tour de France/Tour de Fleece 2023 Stage 12

The Cycling: Stage 12 is 169km of a hilly route that starts in Roanne and ends in Belleville-en-Beaujolais, France.

The Daily Challenge: Spin a plant fibre - if you want a real challenge, find some plant material from your garden to spin.

Suggested Fibre: Flax/Linen

What I did

I had found a fibre braid that was mostly plant fibre but I was nervous about spinning that as this time.  I want to take my time over it and sometimes the TdF can feel a little bit time pressured because you want to try and attempt the challenges and spin as much as possible for the team.  I'm glad that yesterdays spin has spilled over to today and I will just finish that instead.  It's nice to do the challenges when you can but its not the be-all and end-all of the event.

The finished yarn is greyer than I expected it to be.  I thought it would have more of a brown tinge to it.  I am considering over-dying this in the future and maybe going for a medium blue as the tone of the grey will affect the dye and I will be hoping for something similar to the blue of the last Fibonacci spun yarn, National Trust, that is a lovely muted shade of blue. The finished yarn is 100% Wool (Castlemilk Moorit x Norfolk Horn) and is sport weight.  One skein is 225m/75g and the other is 224m/74g which means overall I have 449m/149g.

Tour de France/Tour de Fleece 2023 Stage 11

The Cycling: Stage 11 is 180km of a flat route that starts in Clermont-ferrand and ends in Moulins, France.

The Daily Challenge: Spin a dark natural shade.

Suggested Fibre: Black Faroe Island top

What I did

I started spinning the Castlemilk Moorit x Norfolk Horn top that I hand-combed myself on 28th June.

I spun the first skein today and will finish up tomorrow.

Combing the Castlemilk Moorit x Norfolk Horn fleece

8 years ago I bought a 350g bag of raw Castlemilk Moorit x Norfolk Horn fleece.  After a sort and a wash I was left with 248g of clean fleece to prepare.  With one thing and another, being busy with all kinds of other stuff, this bag has been overlooked.  Until now.  One of the fibres on the shopping list for the upcoming TdF was "Faroe Island" and it transpires that this suggestion was for a challenge that will involve a natural dark fibre.  I have this bag of natural dark fleece that is just waiting to become natural dark fibre. 

It is really difficult to describe the colour, kind of dark grey brown but the brown does seem to be more focused on the tips so maybe it is just a bit of sunbleaching?  Castlemilk Moorit sheep are kind of tan through to dark brown so I am expecting some kind of brown in there anyway.

After combing I was left with 163g of hand-combed nests in a whole range of shades so what I decided to do was to combine them on my blending hackle to even out the colours more and this resulted in just a 10g loss, leaving me with 153g of lovely brown-grey top to spin.

I'm ready for the TdF now.